Doldrums...

October 21, 2007

October 21st, and with all the will in the world, d’you think I can squeeze out a lowly sentence or two on my novel?North Cowichan Bay is blanketed in heavy rain-laden clouds today, clouds so pregnant the foothills are completely obscured. Right about now my birds will be glowering atop their perches in the garden. I’ll leave them there for another hour or so…the rain is good for their feathers, and since they’ll not be using them for flying on a day like this, they may as well bathe, and preen in the fresh air.Yes, this perhaps is the pinnacle of what is nicht-so-gut about living on the Island in autumn. Rain, rain, and still more rain.Its an ideal retreat for writing. The ocean is less than thirty yards from my front window, swans are approaching the shore, wide-winged herons have drifted over the cottage and out to their wading-pools throughout the day. ‘Iris’, my Gyr x Peregrine shouted at the wild red-tail which sometimes haunts the space between my cottage and the mountain looming behind it earlier today…how she could pick him out in the cloud-cover I’ll never fathom. I stared in the same direction she did when she froze on my glove in mid-meal, peered between the heavy, dripping branches above us trying to see what she was seeing. Only when I moved out to the lane did I catch a glimpse of his hasty retreat, and only when he was well out of sight did she remember her lunch. Clever girl. And this with only one fully sighted eye. The other, like a cloudy marble, was injured by a clutchmate. I know she can discern some things from that orb too, but how much is impossible to know.There’s just this heaviness about the day today. Some Sundays are like wet blankets, and this is one of them. And its a challenge, because the novel…my first novel…waits to be revealed in the same way a dust-covered scroll waits for the breath which unburdens it of its own obscuring detritus.